![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The first and last you'll hear from me about Taki Soma
This entry is behind a cut in case, like me, you generally prefer to avoid unnecessary drama in your blog reading. I shall resume the lighthearted entries about dogs, snow and butterflies shortly. (Incidentally, along those lines, the woods are full of grouse right now. They were drumming left and right yesterday. Very cool!)
Anyhow...
I'm not going to bother summarizing this one, because if you're one of the non-comics people who reads my blog, you probably won't care about any of this, and if you do care, you can read about it elsewhere. And you know, I wasn't going to whack beehives on this one. I swear I wasn't. I swear this whole post just started out as an innocent comment I was writing for Jane's blog, but the longer and more ranty it got, the more I realized that I probably shouldn't stir up trouble over there -- in the interests of not polluting Jane's blog with my own fevered ravings.
I swear I didn't mean to go into beehive-whacking mode, I swear, I swear ...
... but there's something that happened to me at work just a few days ago that I think has some bearing here.
There are two sides to every story. There are human beings on both sides of every crime and every act of negligence, cruelty, or harmless stupidity. (Which one this might have been is still an open question.) And a conversation with one of my co-workers illustrated that the other day.
One of the big crimes in Fairbanks in the past few months was a drunk driver who killed a little kid on one of the rural roads. 8-year-old kid, riding a bike with his brother, was struck, thrown into the ditch and killed instantly. The driver kept going. A passing vehicle saw the accident and the witness pursued the drunk driver and chased him all the way home. When the drunk driver pulled over, the witness blocked him with his vehicle, at which point the drunk driver got out and became belligerent, tried to browbeat the witness into letting him go and then tried to bribe him.
It's about the most open-and-shut case of good people vs. bad people that I've seen in real life. There are few times that I really, truly think a person should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but this was one of those times. And I do still believe that justice was done (he got convicted). However, Fairbanks being the small town that it is, one of my co-workers used to work with the guy, and we were talking about him the other day. She said that he's basically a nice old guy who lives alone. He's also one of those people who spends so much time drunk that they're almost never sober; she thinks he drinks partly because he's addicted to it and partly because he's lonely and doesn't really have anything else in his life. Jane and I have talked in the past about the personality-affecting influence of alcohol -- it's something that gets its hooks into nice people and turns them into people who aren't nice. And, obviously, this guy killed a kid and it's a good thing for the community that he's off the streets, since if they let him out he'll probably turn around and drive drunk again -- it just strikes me as that type of situation. But he's still a basically decent guy who made a bad mistake and is probably shredding himself over it.
There are human beings on both sides. And maybe it's just my somewhat closeted bleeding-heart-liberal tendencies here, or maybe it's my libertarian leanings which state that all human beings are worthy of respect until my personal experience with them proves otherwise -- but I really don't think there's a whole lot to be gained by demonizing people for making mistakes. This is not to say that Taki Soma shouldn't press charges. That's up to her. She is not a kid or a naive young comics wannabe fresh off the farm. She's a grown woman, about my age I think. What happens next is strictly between Ms. Soma, her friends, and Charles Brownstein. Should she press charges or file a civil suit, that's her decision. I still maintain that it was highly inappropriate for Bourgeois to "break" Ms. Soma's story in a sensationalistic and gossip-mongering fashion, and equally inappropriate for this alleged journalist, and others, to insinuate that a drunken grope by the pool is tantamount to rape. I'm sorry that such a thing happened to Ms. Soma, and being drunkenly groped is unpleasant and scary. But it's not rape, not even close; that's like saying that stealing somebody's stereo is morally equivalent to kidnapping their child, or striking someone during a bar brawl is the same thing as murdering them. (And I have this whole huge OTHER rant, lurking somewhere deep down in me, about how sexually inappropriate language and touching has become one of our society's modern bogey-men -- where the instant that the "sexual harassment" specter rears its ugly head, suddenly common sense flies out the window and people break out the torches and pitchforks. But I will not inflict that one on you today.)
I guess all I'm saying here is that considering the severity -- or lack thereof -- of what appears (by the account of the actual victim) to have happened, the amount of outrage that I'm seeing on the Internet is, well, kind of sad, considering how many much worse things there are to be outraged about. And the fact that this many people -- obviously including me -- feel the need to comment on what is basically a relatively minor incident that none of us are qualified to comment on ... probably means that we all need to get away from our computers for a while and stop living vicariously through other people.
My garden is almost out from under the snow. It's spring, dammit! The private lives of strangers are no business of mine, and I'm obviously spending far too much time worrying about them. The garden ... that, now, that's my business, and one I'm eagerly looking forward to getting back to.
Anyhow...
I'm not going to bother summarizing this one, because if you're one of the non-comics people who reads my blog, you probably won't care about any of this, and if you do care, you can read about it elsewhere. And you know, I wasn't going to whack beehives on this one. I swear I wasn't. I swear this whole post just started out as an innocent comment I was writing for Jane's blog, but the longer and more ranty it got, the more I realized that I probably shouldn't stir up trouble over there -- in the interests of not polluting Jane's blog with my own fevered ravings.
I swear I didn't mean to go into beehive-whacking mode, I swear, I swear ...
... but there's something that happened to me at work just a few days ago that I think has some bearing here.
There are two sides to every story. There are human beings on both sides of every crime and every act of negligence, cruelty, or harmless stupidity. (Which one this might have been is still an open question.) And a conversation with one of my co-workers illustrated that the other day.
One of the big crimes in Fairbanks in the past few months was a drunk driver who killed a little kid on one of the rural roads. 8-year-old kid, riding a bike with his brother, was struck, thrown into the ditch and killed instantly. The driver kept going. A passing vehicle saw the accident and the witness pursued the drunk driver and chased him all the way home. When the drunk driver pulled over, the witness blocked him with his vehicle, at which point the drunk driver got out and became belligerent, tried to browbeat the witness into letting him go and then tried to bribe him.
It's about the most open-and-shut case of good people vs. bad people that I've seen in real life. There are few times that I really, truly think a person should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but this was one of those times. And I do still believe that justice was done (he got convicted). However, Fairbanks being the small town that it is, one of my co-workers used to work with the guy, and we were talking about him the other day. She said that he's basically a nice old guy who lives alone. He's also one of those people who spends so much time drunk that they're almost never sober; she thinks he drinks partly because he's addicted to it and partly because he's lonely and doesn't really have anything else in his life. Jane and I have talked in the past about the personality-affecting influence of alcohol -- it's something that gets its hooks into nice people and turns them into people who aren't nice. And, obviously, this guy killed a kid and it's a good thing for the community that he's off the streets, since if they let him out he'll probably turn around and drive drunk again -- it just strikes me as that type of situation. But he's still a basically decent guy who made a bad mistake and is probably shredding himself over it.
There are human beings on both sides. And maybe it's just my somewhat closeted bleeding-heart-liberal tendencies here, or maybe it's my libertarian leanings which state that all human beings are worthy of respect until my personal experience with them proves otherwise -- but I really don't think there's a whole lot to be gained by demonizing people for making mistakes. This is not to say that Taki Soma shouldn't press charges. That's up to her. She is not a kid or a naive young comics wannabe fresh off the farm. She's a grown woman, about my age I think. What happens next is strictly between Ms. Soma, her friends, and Charles Brownstein. Should she press charges or file a civil suit, that's her decision. I still maintain that it was highly inappropriate for Bourgeois to "break" Ms. Soma's story in a sensationalistic and gossip-mongering fashion, and equally inappropriate for this alleged journalist, and others, to insinuate that a drunken grope by the pool is tantamount to rape. I'm sorry that such a thing happened to Ms. Soma, and being drunkenly groped is unpleasant and scary. But it's not rape, not even close; that's like saying that stealing somebody's stereo is morally equivalent to kidnapping their child, or striking someone during a bar brawl is the same thing as murdering them. (And I have this whole huge OTHER rant, lurking somewhere deep down in me, about how sexually inappropriate language and touching has become one of our society's modern bogey-men -- where the instant that the "sexual harassment" specter rears its ugly head, suddenly common sense flies out the window and people break out the torches and pitchforks. But I will not inflict that one on you today.)
I guess all I'm saying here is that considering the severity -- or lack thereof -- of what appears (by the account of the actual victim) to have happened, the amount of outrage that I'm seeing on the Internet is, well, kind of sad, considering how many much worse things there are to be outraged about. And the fact that this many people -- obviously including me -- feel the need to comment on what is basically a relatively minor incident that none of us are qualified to comment on ... probably means that we all need to get away from our computers for a while and stop living vicariously through other people.
My garden is almost out from under the snow. It's spring, dammit! The private lives of strangers are no business of mine, and I'm obviously spending far too much time worrying about them. The garden ... that, now, that's my business, and one I'm eagerly looking forward to getting back to.
no subject
This is a rant I rather look forward to... it's such an irony in a culture like ours that is so... well, so Brittany Spears. I find it rather baffling.
no subject
no subject
family
(Anonymous) 2006-05-03 06:06 am (UTC)(link)love eben, billiejo, and baby brody
no subject